Week 5 Reading - In the Making: Internal Sources of Inspiration - Soul-Genus Fusion - Jan Harrison (pp. 126-132)

I'm glad I chose this one, and I think the timing was good too.  I appreciate Jan Harrison's deep philosophical beliefs as motivation and drive for her art.  I agree with her underlying belief that we have completely separated ourselves culturally from the animal world and tried to draw lines between qualities that are not really opposites, but spectrums, and that embracing our primordial origins and identifying with the animal world makes us less fragmented.  It's true, humans think too much.  I got a little bit overwhelmed by her commitment to this belief about half way down page 129, when Harrison demonstrates speaking in 'animal tongues' to the parts of her that grew out of her childhood imaginary friends.

I was unable to identify with her as much at that point not only because this seems like slightly abnormal behavior which would probably be a bit unsettling to experience, but also because although I have some driving beliefs or elements of my background and upbringing that noticeably affect my work, I don't think that any of my motivations or that anything I'm trying to say is as strong or even as important to me as communicating her philosophical ideology is to Harrison.  Either that, or I haven't figured out what I'm really trying to express yet, or what my ideology is.
Until that point, I did identify with her quite strongly, mostly through her processes or what she's drawn to.  When I started reading this article I wrote down a quote from page 126; it's a little bit long but it seemed important to me:

Hers is an active quest for a source of vitality and wisdom that has been usurped by the authority of bureaucracies, institutions, laboratories, classrooms, and other such constructions of civilization.  Despite the fact that it "can be fearsome," Harrison relishes the arcane region of the mind that escaped these confining influences of society.

I wrote a paper for a philosophy class that talked about that kind of thing once, how the moments when one experiences true beauty, the moments in life that seem the most genuine, are the ones that take place outside the constraints of  civilization, the ones that we don't make but that are a direct result of our biological humanity and not anything that we've decided on as a society.  I genuinely think this is true.  I'm very interested in the impulses we experience that are remnants from our early days as a species, or the chemical explanations for why we experience attraction to a person or a colour or a pattern or why we like shiny things.  I don't think we're attracted to certain things because we've made them valuable, I think we've made them valuable because we're attracted to them (although when we're talking about the human body, we get into a whole other complicated issue that mostly doesn't make sense anymore).

Even though my work isn't taking place or isn't meant to portray a time, place, or mentality that comes from outside the world of civilization (at least not entirely), I think something that I identify with about Harrison's work is the desire to understand the underlying drive for the things we value. For me, it's usually a story of a person.  Even if it's just the smallest hint of a story, there is a history behind everyone I draw or paint, and that's important to me.

I also wrote down a quote from Harrison cited in the essay on page 129. "I am purposefully not knowledgeable about ancient myth.  Instead, myth comes out of my body.  Myth is physical and also psychological.  Original mythology comes from these sources."  This is obviously very important in Harrison's work, that all of the images and inspiration and stories come from that very primal part of her mind and not from culture, and it reminded me of something I said in my statement with this week's work.  I had mentioned that I wasn't sure if I should research the patterns I'm working with when I come up with an embodiment of that time period and particular pattern for the portrait on each one.  Harrison's mentality is difficult to apply when working with an element that is derived directly from culture and history.  I can't all come from me and still make sense, because I am making a sort of historical reference, and am obviously influenced in this respect by examples I've already seen of the use of these kinds of patterns and period dress.  But this statement made me think about it again and makes me more confident that the stories of these women probably should come from me and that it's okay if what I come up with isn't quite historically plausible. 

I looked up some of Harrison's work right after reading the essay, since there were only a couple of examples in the book.  I found it interesting that on page 131 in the essay, there's a statement about how Harrison's work kind of proceeds in the opposite direction that religion does, accepting death rather than defying it, and heading downward instead of directing everything upward like religion does, because some of the marks on the paintings I looked at, which were in the Corridor series, reminded me of religious iconography.  In these paintings, whiskers are highlighted with bright yellow or gold paint, which stands out against the darker backgrounds.  It's interesting, too, how Harrison almost rejects culture, because in some of her paintings, floral elements migrate across the canvas and are sometimes even arranged in symmetrical patterns more reminiscent of textiles than of nature. This is perhaps an indication that no matter how aware we are of our origins and of the things that we've subsequently created in our somewhat artificial cultural environment, these things still influence us, even subconsciously, and it's very difficult to do what Harrison is trying to do, to revert to a more natural, animalistic state.

Oh and that 20 room mansion she bought and then theme-decorated, I would so love to do that.  Her world, she called it.  Mine might not be quite so universal but I could see myself wallpapering the walls with different textile patterns and displaying paintings of women wearing those textiles in all the rooms.  That'd be a great show.  Hmm, miniature version for this class?  Guess I need to find some wallpaper!